Passages in 'Black Boy' Raise Furor in Fillmore : Education: Some parents contend that Richard Wright's book contains amoral, violent messages. Others defend the autobiography.

By CONSTANCE SOMMER

March 28, 1994 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

Nearly half a century after it was first published, Richard Wright’s searing account of growing up poor and black in the segregated South has split a Fillmore High School honors class into two groups.

Parents objecting to what they say are amoral and violent messages in the 303-page “Black Boy” have insisted that their ninth- and 10th-grade children be given an alternative text. Out of 68 students in the two English class sections, 11 now spend the class period in the library, reading a novel about Eastern European immigrants.

In fact, the parents raised such a furor that the district has called a special parent-faculty conference April 4 to discuss the issue.

“The title seemed fairly aggressive to me,” said Brian Botstone, who sensed a problem with the book ever since his son mentioned his new class assignment earlier this month.

Flipping through the text confirmed Botstone’s worst fears. “I know it’s reality, but being reality doesn’t make it worthwhile,” he said. “This is not conducive to teaching people what civilized people are supposed to behave like.”

But while some adults fume over what they call incendiary content, many other parents defend Wright’s autobiography as a valuable lesson in the trials of bigotry and deprivation.

“This community is very, very prejudiced, and there are lots of (religious) fundamentalists who feel it would be great if we could put blinders over our kids,” said Ruth Prado, a parent of a student in the class. “But I think it’s important for my son to know what life is all about. These are things kids need to be exposed to.”

The students reading “Black Boy”--many of whom say it is the best book they’ve read all year--agree with their parents.

“The book made me think about what’s really out there,” said Mark Prado, 15, Ruth Prado’s son. “I think something like that could happen to me, and it makes me think I should never be prejudiced against anybody.”

The controversy caught Andrea Allen, the teacher and a big fan of the book, by surprise. The book is part of the regular honors curriculum and, when she last taught it two years ago, not one parent objected.

“I think the book is wonderful,” she said. “I tell the kids, ‘When you are reading it, if you are not feeling any emotional pain, then something is wrong with the way you are reading it. I want you to take a good look at what man can do to man.’ ”

It is precisely that message that critics say made “Black Boy” a milestone in American literature. Over time, the book has become required reading in high schools and universities around the country, used as an insight into black culture and the black modern literary tradition.

“Wright was one of the first black writers to try to focus on the rage that arises from the black urban experience,” said Richard Yarborough, an associate professor of English and Afro-American Studies at UCLA. “He was breaking some barriers.”

Wright described his childhood and adolescence as a minefield fraught with bigotry and physical and mental abuse--from his black friends and relatives, mired in their poverty and ignorance, as well as from whites.

No matter how he attempted to cope with his surroundings, Wright found himself unable to fit within the narrow, confining roles prescribed to blacks in turn-of-the-century America.

“I knew what was wrong with me, but I could not correct it,” the author writes in one passage. “The words and actions of white people were baffling signs to me. I was living in a culture and not a civilization, and I could learn how that culture worked only by living with it.

“While standing before a white man I had to figure out how to perform each act and how to say each word,” he continues. “I could not help it. I could not grin. . . . I could not react as the world in which I lived expected me to; that world was too baffling, too uncertain.”

That, however, is one of the book’s milder passages. Wright graphically describes key events in his life to drive home how abhorrent conditions and abusive relationships can lead to a lifetime of resentment and occasional outbursts.

One such description that some students and parents in Fillmore mention repeatedly is the “kitten passage.”

Wright writes how, as a young child, he hated his father for his father’s constant beatings and erratic temper, which flared up with the slightest provocation.

One day, a meowing kitten drove Wright’s father into a rage and he bellowed at his son to “ ‘kill that damn thing. . . . Do anything, but get it away from here!’ ”

Seething at this unreasonable reaction, the boy decided to take his father literally. He quickly strung a noose and hung the kitten.

“It gasped, slobbered, spun, doubled, clawed the air frantically,” he writes. “Finally, its mouth gaped and its pink-white tongue shot out stiffly.”

This is the kind of writing that alarms Marion Holladay, whose daughter Spring, a 10th-grader, is reading Willa Cather’s “My Antonia” instead of “Black Boy.”

“I know there are a lot of books out there that are better quality than this,” she fumed. “I don’t understand how somebody could read it and not see what’s wrong with it.”

Spring, like many of the students reading the Cather book instead, agrees with her mother about Wright’s autobiography.

“I don’t want to fill my mind with that kind of stuff,” she said.

Allen said she began rereading the book after some of the initial complaints. She said she quickly realized her mistake in not sending a notification letter home.

After all, she said, this is a district where parents regularly object to their children reading “Catcher in the Rye” and “Lord of the Flies.”

“Yep, I should’ve seen it,” she said. “And for my own sanity, I will do that next time. It is very difficult to teach a class when some of your students are in the library.”

For each parent who refuses to get near the book, there are many others reading it because of all the uproar and finding that they like it very much.

“I have read it cover to cover, and I thought it was a great book,” said Jan Lee, whose son Ryan, 14, is in the class. “I’m trying to figure out what they find trashy about it.”

The book is not always pleasant going, but then, neither is life, Lee said.

“The reality of life is that it’s not always sweet, and children need to be exposed to that kind of thing so they have the ability to make decisions,” she said.

Lee’s views mirror those of other parents who do not object to their children reading “Black Boy.” She said she did not worry about the book exposing her son to subversive ideas.

“If a child who is 14 years old goes out and kills a kitten, then they have a real problem and it’s not the book that caused it,” she said. “It’s hard to raise kids these days, but I’m hoping we’ve given them enough of a foundation that one book doesn’t undermine their whole morality.”